Futurist Thomas Frey: On May 24th, Gary Connery, a 42 year old stuntman from Oxfordshire, England jumped from a helicopter hovering over one mile in the air over southern England, and glided to the earth using a specially designed wing suit. His runway was comprised of a cobbled-up crash-pad fabricated from 18,000 cardboard boxes to soften the impact.
Continue reading… “56 Future Accomplishments: Waiting for Someone to go First”
The electric light bulb was a failure.
In the early 1800’s, the British chemist Humphry Davy invented the light bulb but it was a failure. The light bulb spent almost 80 years being passed from one researcher to another. Finally, in 1879, Thomas Edison figured out to to make a light bulb that people would buy. But the technology wasn’t an immediate success. Another 40 years later the electric utilities were stable and profitable businesses. The light bulb only happened because the utilities created other reasons to use electricity. They found a lot of uses for electric motors and the electric toaster and electric curling iron were invented. They also built Coney Island. And they installed electric streetcars lines in towns. All of these other gadgets gave us the light bulb.
Continue reading… “32 technological innovations that will change your tomorrow”
Futurist Thomas Frey: In December 2006, Britain made its final payment of $84 million on a $4.34 billion loan from the U.S. that was made all the way back in 1945. Germany wasn’t the only country to go bankrupt after WWII. This money allowed Britain to stave off its total collapse after devoting almost all its resources to the war for over half a decade.
Continue reading… “When Countries Go Bankrupt”
By 2016 we are on pace to generate 1.3 zettabytes of data, about four times more than we create today, according to the latest data out from Cisco. Cisco tells us that’s more than 38 million DVDs streamed in an hour. Or, you can think of it as a 1 followed by 21 zeros.
Continue reading… “What our web addiction will look like in 2016”
Futurist Thomas Frey: The insurance industry exists as a tool for mitigating the costs and damage associated with a single incident occurring for an individual or organization.
Continue reading… “Transforming the Future of the Insurance Industry”
Futurist Thomas Frey: Scarcity is defined as an economic condition that arises when people have far greater wants than the available resources. Most often we think about the limited supplies of natural resources, but it includes far more than that.
Continue reading… “Inventing Our Next Great Scarcities”
No memorization will be necessary in the future.
Imagine if the extent your natural intelligence could be determined with a simple scan where you’d have to do nothing at all. What if it became the new standard for college admissions. Deterministic as it may seem, at least we wouldn’t have anymore goddamn vocab flash cards to memorize.
According to Duke University professor Jonathan Wai, writing in Psychology Today, there’s been a study conducted at UC Irvine since 1988, in which test subjects were put through various aptitude tests while conducting brain scans. What they discovered is the smartest patients required less brain power to accomplish a task. Efficiency!
Continue reading… “We’re heading towards a future where brain scans replace the SAT”
Futurist Thomas Frey: For colleges and universities, the great age of experimentation is now upon us.
Last week, Harvard and MIT announced a new nonprofit partnership, known as edX, to offer free online courses from both universities.
Continue reading… “The Rise of the SuperProfessor”
Futurist Thomas Frey: As a Futurist, people often ask me how many of my predictions have come true. I find this to be a rather uncomfortable question. It’s uncomfortable, not because my track record hasn’t been up to par (actually, a high percentage have come true), but because accuracy of predictions is a poor way of measuring the value of a Futurist.
Continue reading… “The Eight Critical Value Points of A Futurist”
The new filling contains calcium phosphate nanoparticles that rebuild tooth minerals.
Thanks to a new dental breakthrough, the dreaded trip to the dentist to replace a worn-out filling could soon be a thing of the past. Scientists have used nanotechnology to create the first cavity-filling composite that kills harmful bacteria and regenerates tooth structure lost to decay.
Continue reading… “Dental filling of the future kills bacteria and regenerates tooth”
Futurist Thomas Frey: Every couple years, as the November election draws near, my wife Deb and I receive our ballots in the mail. Both of us spend considerable time studying the issues and candidates before making our final decisions. As with most couples, we don’t always agree.
Continue reading… “Pre-Testing Your Right to Vote”
Libraries have acted as community cornerstones for millennia.
Every April marks School Library Month. Libraries celebrate how they promote education and awareness in an open, nurturing space. What makes them such lasting institutions, though, isn’t the mere act of preserving books and promoting knowledge. Rather, it’s the almost uncanny ability to consistently adapt to the changing demands of the local populace and emerging technology alike. The library system probably won’t disappear anytime soon, but rather, see itself blossoming into something new and exciting in congruence with today’s myriad informational demands.
Continue reading… “Top 10 changes we can expect from the library of the future”